Oracle Database Express Edition (XE)

Every upgrade has different timelines, mostly depending on the customizations.
Every customization needs to be evaluated to be reapplied, deprecated (replaced by new functionality in 9.1).
Especially customizations that have to be replied that are made to vanilla objects. Customization as add on (fully new records, pages, components, etc), do not effect the upgrade timelines that much.
The first test move during the upgrade will take a lot of time due to this, but the second/third/etc test move and the move to production should have to be fully automated to be run within roughly 24 hours.

Giving a estimate is quit difficult of the entire upgrade path, so make sure you plan enough time for the first test move.


Hakan

In addition, you may have also to count some time for intermediate steps depending of the support combination between Peopletools and application, between Peopletools and db version.
And also some change in your entire architecture due to the 64bit support only of PT8.52.
It can be really a taff to do such change.
I would estimate the time for :
1. Upgrade to the highest Oracle version supported within the current Peopletools
2. Upgrade to the highest Peopletools version supported within your current application and upgraded Oracle db version -- it might or might not implies a new 64bit architecture
3. Upgrade to the highest application version supported by PTools of step 2

More loop of step 1 to 3 might be needed, you have to go through the all certifications path. -- see my next post
Of course, each step take time, as Hakan said, depending of the customizations, new features and so forth.
No one can tell you the time needed for this, even you at this stage without going deeper in the analysis.

Nicolas.

Edited by: N Gasparotto on Dec 8, 2012 6:26 PM

Just for you...

HCM8.9 is supported on Peopletools till 8.52, so you could do that application upgrade at the very end of the process.
According to PeopleSoft Enterprise PeopleTools PT 8.46 Certifications [ID 749108.1], the highest Oracle db version supported on PT8.46 is 10.2.0.4.
In the mean time, the highest Peopletools version supporting 10.2.0.4 is 8.51, so I would go for :
=> Upgrade db to 10.2.0.4 -- it should be relatively easy depending of your exact version/patchset (you said only 10g, it can be any patchset of two different versions, 10.1.0.x or 10.2.0.x)
=> Upgrade Peopletools to 8.51.xx -- it would probably make a plateform and/or OS change for 64bit support (you did not say about your OS)
=> Upgrade db to 11.2.0.3
=> Upgrade Peopletools to 8.52.xx -- it should not be a big gap after the previous PTools upgrade
=> Upgrade application to 9.1

For FSCM 8.8, it is also supported on Peopletools till 8.52, so, you can follow the same steps as I described above for HCM path.

Anyway, there's a lot to be done here.

Nicolas.

Thank you Nicolas and Hakan.

Nicolas,

There is a platform migration to different platform and OS as well due to aging and deteriorating HW. I went through the upgrade scenario and doing it in chunks would be too time consuming, as every step of the upgrade path will require multiple-test-moves/testing/downtime/go-live for both FMS and HCM, and will take a long time. The other option is to do this all at once on new HW/OS/Tools/App.

Both options are daunting. The second option looks better as there is time available for the many test moves and testing. Yes, Having kept up with the Tools and App version would have been ideal, but that is not the case here.

The initial test move looks promising. Your comments are most welcome.

Thanks

We all are tempted to do a all-at-once method. We all are thinking that's straightforward, faster, easier, less downtime... but in the end, and based on experience, that's not always the case, I would even say that's rarely the case.
You know, small changes/downtime are not always time consuming compared to a big one. And it's most likely less risky.

Few years ago, I have had to upgrade the Oracle version (from 9i to 10g), upgrade the PTools (from 8.46 to 8.48) and move from HPUX to AIX, all in one week-end. That was a lot of work before doing it on production, and a lot of effort.
I did it within 30 hours : move prd to a temp server, upgrade the Oracle db, upgrade the Peopletools and finally moved to AIX (rman offers the possibility to convert file from a plateform to an other).
After that go-live, even if we prepared every thing, tested, tested, and tested again, we spent quite a lot of time to stabilize the production environment, there's always something unexpected (few on Oracle - bugs and/or parameters, few on OS, few on Peopletools...). It was without application upgrade. It was an upgrade of 2 similar Peopletools (8.5x are really an other story).

Your case is quite a bit more complicated. The Peopletools 8.5x can be a little bit more tricky (and time consuming). Change hardware. Oracle upgrade. And application upgrade. You also have to count about a fallback strategy, just in case...

I would persist in the sequence I mentioned above.
1. First upgrade your source db to 10.2.0.4, it can be done much earlier than the rest of the upgrade. And the downtime for this upgrade is relatively short, it should not take hours.
2. Then move the db into an equivalent of the target system (by the method of your choice, consider rman as one of the fastest), and upgrade to the Peopletools to 8.51.
Upgrade to 11.2.0.3.
Upgrade to Peopletools 8.52.
Finally, move your upgraded env to the target platform.
3. I would strongly recommend to leave the application upgrade for later. There's a so big gap between 8.8/8.9 and 9.1...

That said, whether the step 2 above can be done in one shot, it's a lot of work and a really big downtime is required. But of course it's up to you to decide to do all steps in a row.

What's your time window for this ?

Lastly, and not least, are your customers ready for such a change ? Peopletools change is more technical but it has some GUI behavior changes. Application 9.1 might imply new processes, new way of work... They may have some problem to know how they have to work.

Give them a chance to know the new tools, in the meantime that will give you more time for the application upgrade.

Nicolas.

Nicolas,

Thanks for your input. It looks like the upgrade from FSCM 8.8x/Tools 8.4X to FSCM 9.1/Tools 8.52 is on a certified upgrade path.

I'll leave may main question about Upgrade Timeline as "Unanswered". I hope someone who had completed a 8.8 - 9.1 upgrade can comment on the timeline.

I did not say otherwise, but it's not straightforward.

Nicolas.

I don't know your installation so I will attempt to provide you a timeline based on as vanilla as I've seen:

HR or Finance - without many customizations
Initial pass - 1 month (this includes a demo install) {Compare Report 5 days}
Build out of development world - 1 month (realistically) {DEV, TST, QA, PRD}
Patch Application - 2 weeks
Development - 1 month (concentrated on Record and Fields so you can start first test upgrade)
Test_Upgrade_#1 - 2 weeks (no tunning or parallel processes)
Development - 1 month (online)
Test_Upgrade_#2 - 2 weeks (tunning and/or parallel processes)
Development - 1 month (interfaces)
Test_Upgrade_#3 - 1 week (validate optimizations)
Final_Test_Upgrade - 48 hours (get numbers for go-live)
Go-Live - 24 hours

Understand these installs had very litttle in the way of customizations - less 250 online and less than 50 sqrs. More customized you are the more time you need for development.